


It's a Part Five *offbeat clapping*

by neuronary



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Mother Hama AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21783676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuronary/pseuds/neuronary
Summary: Azula gets a visitor after a particularly disastrous Agni Kai.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 1090





	It's a Part Five *offbeat clapping*

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).



> my laptop is breathing its dying breath and this au will not leave me alone. (please forgive the title)

Zuko comes back once she’s fire lord. For all the wrong reasons, with that waterbending peasant by his side, and she can tell from the second they land that Mother has gotten to him.

So she fights, because that’s all she’s ever really known how to do and father is the only one she can still make proud and maybe if this Zuko, the one that survived, is gone, then she’ll get little Zuzu in her head back.

She doesn’t remember exactly what happens after the lightning-that-didn’t-work, but she wakes up in a room with white walls and exactly one bed.

Zuko comes in and she tries to speak but her lips won’t move. All she can do is move her head and stare. He looks healthier than he did last time. He’s eaten, and he might be sleeping. 

He leaves after a few hours, and comes back the next morning with tea. He talks to her about his new friends. He has more friends than her. She feels as though the world has shifted half a foot to the left. She forces words past her lips.

“What happened?”

Zuko talks about the Agni Kai. She  _ knows  _ about the spirits-damned Agni Kai. She slaps his arm, weakly, and hates herself. Zuko sighs and starts again. From the beginning.

He was kidnapped by a waterbender.  _ Weakling  _ she thinks, but Mother is still hissing  _ monster  _ from the mirror shards in the corner and Father is dead and she has decided to be better than both of them, so she doesn’t say it.

He explains bloodbending and she decides that it might actually be quite nice to just stay here in this room forever and banish that waterbender Zuko seems to have  _ completely forgotten about _ . 

At the end of everything, they’re both at a bit of a loss. She wonders if she should hug him, then wonders if she has the energy for it. In the end, she has to settle for patting his face as gently as she can with dead fish limbs. He pats her face in some kind of misguided attempt at solidarity and she sets his sleeve on fire.

The guards outside are made satisfyingly uncomfortable by the sound of their cackling. In the next wing over, an earthbender thinks she might have missed a trick with the other royal.

**Author's Note:**

> azula and toph: potential for excellency with a side of serial killing


End file.
